Blockchain-Oriented Services Computing in Action: Insights from a User Study

TL;DR

This study evaluates a service-based blockchain architecture through real-world experimentation, revealing that blockchain's architectural restrictions add significant complexity without clear user benefits, highlighting the need for further research.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into the design, implementation, and user acceptance of blockchain-oriented service architectures in real-life scenarios.

Findings

Blockchain architecture introduces notable overhead compared to simpler systems.

Design limitations of blockchain services demand extra effort for basic functionalities.

Further research is needed to understand trade-offs and optimize blockchain service design.

Abstract

Blockchain architectures promise disruptive innovation but factually they pose many architectural restrictions to classical service-based applications and show considerable design, implementation, and operations overhead. Furthermore, the relation between such overheads and user benefits is not clear yet. To shed light on the aforementioned relations, a service-based blockchain architecture was designed and deployed as part of a field study in real-life experimentation. An observational approach was then performed to elaborate on the technology-acceptance of the service-based blockchain architecture in question. Evidence shows that the resulting architecture is, in principle, not different than other less complex equivalents; furthermore, the architectural limitations posed by the blockchain-oriented design demand a significant additional effort to be put onto even the simplest of functionalities. We conclude that further research shall be invested in clarifying further the design principles we learned as part of this study as well as any trade-offs posed by blockchain-oriented service design and operation.